The Blue Chair Jam Cookbook

By Rachel Saunders

A comprehensive, year-round guide to jellies, jams, conserves, preserves, and marmalades, featuring over 100 recipes.

If you love to cook, are crazy for fruit, or have even a passing interest in jam or marmalade, Rachel Saunders’s James Beard Award–nominated Blue Chair Jam Cookbook is the book for you. Rachel’s legendary Bay Area jam company, Blue Chair Fruit, earned instant fame for its intensely flavored preserves when it launched in 2008. Rachel’s passion for fruit shines through every part of this lavishly illustrated book, which is the culmination of nearly ten years of research. The Blue Chair Jam Cookbook is the essential jam and marmalade book of the twenty-first century, one in which Rachel’s modern yet nostalgic vision of cooking takes center stage.

Rachel offers an in-depth exploration of individual fruits, a comprehensive technical section, and nearly 120 original recipes organized around the seasons. In offerings ranging from Plum Jam to Strawberry–Blood Orange Marmalade with Rosemary and Black Fig and Candied Citrus Jam, she vividly captures the joyful essence of fruit and of the preserving process.

The Blue Chair Jam Cookbook is not only an exciting and vibrant exploration of fruit and of the seasons, but also one of the few books that clearly explains and illustrates preserving techniques. Each recipes includes clear and detailed directions to help ensure success, and Rachel explores a wide range of technical questions as they relate to individual fruits and types of preserves. Whether you make jam or marmalade once a year or every week, and whether you are a home or professional cook, The Blue Chair Jam Cookbook is sure to claim a special place in your cookbook library.

Praise for The Blue Chair Jam Cookbook

“A complete and exquisite guide to making jam and marmalade at home. In addition to sharing 100+ recipes, Saunders walks you step-by-step through the process with in-depth explanations as well as photos of the various steps so you see exactly what each phase looks like.” —Epicurious

“Blue Chair could well become the jam maker’s quintessential reference book.” —SFGate.com

“Rachel Saunders . . . is quite possibly the high priestess of jam making. [The Blue Chair Jam Cookbook] . . . belongs in the kitchen of anyone interested in keeping their pantry stocked with delicious and unique fruit preserves. And Rachel’s instructions are so thorough and clear, even beginners are assured success.” —The Splendid Table’s “Weeknight Kitchen” newsletter

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
• Release date: Sep 21, 2010
• ISBN: 9781449401986

Book preview

part I introduction

THE ROOTS OF BLUE CHAIR FRUIT

The kitchen has always been my favorite room in the house and the market my favorite place outside. Some of my earliest memories revolve around food: strawberry picking; churning mocha ice cream on our back porch; making butter in the blender; and my favorite of all, the smell of fresh tomatoes in the yard. My mother taught me basic cooking when I was young and then set me free in the kitchen, where I eagerly began exploring. I started dreaming of California after receiving a San Francisco cookbook for Christmas one year. It was largely this book, which spoke of fruits I had never tasted and spices I had never heard of, that taught me to cook, always with my parents’ encouragement.

I studied French and art in college, spending a year and a half in France and Tuscany by my early twenties. France was a delight: Meals were ritualized and structured, food was beautiful and fresh, and sweet things were always just sweet enough. The markets were awash with perfect, luscious fruit, much of which I had never seen before.

I moved to San Francisco upon receiving my degree, and shortly thereafter began working with food. I spent my off hours browsing at farmers’ markets and reading cookbooks, always striving to learn more. The sheer numbers and beauty of the fruits available dazzled me. I tried to cook as many desserts as I could, but I found myself practically drowning in my creations. I couldn’t possibly hope to eat them all! It was then that I decided to try my hand at jams.

My first batch of jam came from an excellent dessert cookbook, and it turned out well, but it was not exactly what I had envisioned. It was at that moment that I became hooked on jam making. Several years of intense experimentation ensued. I slaved away in my tiny kitchen, gradually developing my own techniques in my quest for perfect results. Over time, I grew to understand fruit. I also, through the course of these several years, formed my own vision of what the ideal textures were for different jams and marmalades.

After nearly a decade of work, I had finally reached the point where I felt I could create any jam or marmalade I desired. And my company, Blue Chair Fruit, was born.

For me, blue chair represents the nostalgic kitchen, brimming with comforting warmth and enticing smells and tastes. It is a natural extension of the farm and garden, a dynamic playground where there is always something new and delicious in season and where we can let our imaginations run wild. Above all, it is an idea of cooking—one in which inspiration is everywhere, waiting to be found. Aside from all the hard work involved in jam making, it is the sheer fun of it, and its rich rewards and sense of adventure, that inspired these pages. Few things match the satisfaction of gazing at a row of sparkling, brightly colored jars, just waiting to be shared with your family and friends, or the anticipation of trying that next idea or picking that next fruit from your backyard tree.

Turn to the preserving section of a midcentury cookbook and you will likely find recipes for a few simple preserves, perhaps one or two with a couple of interesting herbs or spices thrown in. You might be astonished by the extremely high quantity of sugar called for. And, once you select a recipe and begin making jam, the lack of clear directions may also amaze you. Something—you tell yourself after you have devoted a few hours, been splattered with blackberry juice, and are looking at a pile of dirty dishes and a few jars of leathery preserves—something was missing, but I’m just not sure what!

Preserving transforms raw ingredients—fruit, sugar, lemon—as much or as little as the individual cook desires. It is up to you, the jam maker, to determine the eventual texture, appearance, flavor, consistency, and complexity of each individual preserve. To do this with confidence, it is invaluable to have a clear understanding of both the technical and aesthetic possibilities of preserving.

The Blue Chair Jam Cookbook is a distillation of all I have learned about fruit in the past ten years. The recipes here represent my favorite ideas and techniques from each season. Every year, I make different jams and marmalades than the year before, because new ideas come to me all the time. The possibilities are endless and, once you have acquired the taste, it becomes difficult to resist making jam when the opportunity presents itself. Strawberries are an excellent example. This seemingly ordinary fruit can be transformed not only into delicious plain jam but also into something truly extraordinary: combined with a whole host of other flavors, made into jelly, even incorporated into a marmalade. I am not a traditionalist when it comes to preserving, but I am a stickler for texture, balance, and appearance. The essential question is, does a preserve taste and look great? The answer to this question should always be yes.

Once you begin to explore the entire range of herbs, spices, spirits, liqueurs, and even extracts available, a whole new world reveals itself: One in which not merely a fruit but also a certain flavor that may seem to belong with that fruit may excite and inspire you. As you read through these pages, you will see preserves ranging from the most basic to the most complex, along with many suggestions for variations. I hope this approach will help you have fun making something exquisite, something more than the sum of its parts. And this, in a broader sense, is the joy of preserving and of cooking in general.

This book is about fruit, but in a very special context. Unlike fruit desserts, jams and marmalades are rarely eaten alone. Flavorless jam simply tastes sugary, and its personality fades away next to a slice of bread and butter or a cup of yogurt. Thus, using the absolute best fruit you can find is essential. The best fruit is what grows in your own backyard. My devotion to fresh, seasonal, local fruit informs every word of this book.

Great preserves stand out for their perfect balance of flavor, texture, and appearance. How do you achieve this balance? When making a jam or marmalade, even if you are following a preexisting recipe, nothing is more helpful or inspiring than understanding how to put your ideals into practice. Each batch of jam you make will differ slightly from the one that came before. Thus, a clear understanding of fruit, and of how it acts when cooked, will help you through the adventure of preserving.

chapter 1

JAMS, JELLIES & MARMALADES: GETTING THE MOST OUT OF FRUIT

DEFINING JAMS, JELLIES, MARMALADES & THEIR KIN

Although we have all tasted jams, jellies, and marmalades at one time or another, the question I am most often asked is simply: What is the difference between these three major types of preserves? The answer has nothing to do with the ingredients, although the one essential ingredient for all preserves is fruit. Instead, it concerns both the techniques used to prepare and cook the fruit and the texture of the resulting preserve. A jam is a fruit preserve consisting of pieces of fruit cooked with sugar until they thicken and partially break down. A jelly is an extracted fruit juice that has been combined with sugar, lemon juice, and (sometimes) added pectin and boiled until it sets. A marmalade is a jelly with clearly defined pieces of fruit suspended in it. Two other related types of preserves, butters and cheeses (or pastes), also exist. A fruit butter is a sweetened fruit puree cooked very slowly for a long time over low heat, generally resulting in a smoother texture than that of most jams. A fruit cheese or paste is a high-pectin fruit butter cooked until it has thickened and lost enough moisture to form a solid mass when cool.

Though they all begin with fruit, each type of preserve achieves its flavor differently. Both jams and marmalades have an intense taste, but they arrive at it in opposite ways. Good jams are cooked as quickly as possible with as little sugar as possible, so as best to capture the essence of the raw fruit; the idea is to take the fruit to its highest pinnacle of flavor and then immediately stop the cooking. Jellies and marmalades take the opposite approach, achieving their strength through concentration. A good jelly or marmalade, instead of quickly flash-cooking its ingredients, cooks them slowly over a very long period of time (with marmalade, often days) in order to draw out every last drop of flavor and pectin from the fruit. Jellies and marmalades, while they taste intensely of fruit, do not taste of raw fruit at all.

Though different fruits are perhaps more naturally suited to different preserving techniques, it is frequently a personal as much as a practical choice to make one type of preserve over another with a particular fruit. For example, rhubarb, which is most frequently associated with jam, may be used in both jellies and marmalades; and kumquats, which are most frequently associated with jellies and marmalades, may be used in jam.

UNDERSTANDING JAMS

Jam, no matter what the flavor, always reminds me of England. Jams as we know and think of them today have a special bond with that country. Many now-classic jam fruits, including damsons and wild blackberries, were first brought into wide use by the English, who still maintain a taste for these time-tested flavors. The word jam is unique to the English language and is British in origin. Its linguistic precursor, marmalade, has appeared in many different cultures and meant many different things over the centuries. In English, one often thinks of marmalade as strictly a citrus preserve, but in other languages this word refers to fruit preserves of widely varying types.

The earliest fruit to be preserved was the quince, which was stored and cooked in honey in ancient Rome.

From these early quince preserves, others followed, always using fruits, such as damsons or sour oranges, that were high in both pectin (a natural thickener) and acid (a natural preservative). The tradition of preserves made with low-pectin, low-acid fruits started much later. Fruits low in pectin and acid are not as naturally suited to long-term preservation, and they are often, unlike the earliest preserved fruits, excellent eaten raw.

Although there are many variations in technique, the basic idea and process of jam making remain the same, no matter what kind of jam you are creating. To make jam, raw fruit is combined directly with sugar and lemon juice and cooked until it thickens to a spreadable consistency.

Numerous factors affect the jam-making process, including the specific qualities of the fruit and your desired end result. Jam making may incorporate a wide range of techniques. Depending upon which jam you are preparing, you may alternately puree part of the fruit ahead of time, macerate it with sugar overnight to draw out its juice, extract some of its juice prior to cooking, cook it in stages, cook it over high heat, or cook it over low heat, to name just a few possibilities.

Jams should be spreadable and unified in texture. Although some jams may be looser than others, they should be neither watery nor overly firm. Jam’s most important characteristic is its intensely fresh taste. Because a jam’s fruit is cooked for a much shorter time than that of a jelly or marmalade, jams bring out the pure flavor of a fruit without dramatically altering it. The brief cooking time and uneven texture of jams make them the most rustic of preserves. When making jam, no matter what the fruit, your goal should always be to make the freshest-tasting, most balanced and flavorful, and best-textured jam possible.

THE BEAUTY OF JELLIES & MARMALADES

Jelly making transforms fruit, reducing it to a tiny quantity of very potent sweetened juice. The process concentrates the fruit’s flavor dramatically, producing a result with a complex taste that may contrast sharply with its perfectly smooth texture. It is impossible to tell by simply looking at a jelly what fruit was used to make it. Jellies and marmalades are a labor of love, and they often require a large quantity of fruit. The effort of jelly and marmalade making is amply rewarded by the stunning end result.

The word jelly has acquired a negative connotation for many of us, because commercial jellies so frequently have a hard texture and have too often lost all taste of the fruits that were used to make them. But homemade jelly is a completely different story. Velvety and smooth, the jelly you make yourself will outshine nearly anything you might buy.

Similarly, it is difficult to find a really great store-bought marmalade, and people are often delighted and surprised upon sampling the marmalades in this book. Although I love bitter marmalade, marmalades need not be bitter if you do not want them to be. There are many milder marmalades to be made, which even the most determined marmalade hater may find delicious.

JELLY MAKING

To make jelly, fruit is simmered with water to extract its juice and then strained to make a perfectly clear liquid. This liquid is then cooked in small quantities with sugar and lemon juice until the setting point is reached. Because jellies rely on reaching the setting point, which can only be attained if the mixture has a high concentration of sugar, jellies often taste sweeter than jams. However, because of their smooth texture and concentrated flavor, you may use less, so a given volume of jelly usually lasts much longer than the identical volume of jam.

Things to Keep in Mind When Making Jelly

The most important thing to remember when making jelly is that in the initial stage, the fruit should be cooked for an extremely long time, long enough for all of its flavor and personality to leach into the juice. The entire character of the fruit is needed, including that of its skin, seeds, core, and rind. Thus, simply squeezing the juice from a raw fruit rarely works for jelly. If you shortchange this initial step, your juice will lack both pectin and flavor. You will know when the juice is ready because, even if you are using a low-pectin fruit, it will thicken to become noticeably more viscous than it was initially.

Take care to avoid adding either too much or too little water to the fruit for the initial cooking. Too much water will unnecessarily prolong the final cooking time, leading to an overcooked taste. Use the recipes here as a guide when you start cooking fruit. Then, if you feel at any stage of cooking that the juice is getting too thick or is cooking down too much, cautiously add a little more water. Factors that affect the quantity of water needed include the width and surface area of your pan, the water content and softness of the particular fruit, and the level of heat under your pot.

For jelly, it is best to strain the juice in two stages: first through a mesh strainer, to remove the bulk of the solids; then through a fine-mesh sieve, to remove any lingering solids clouding the juice. For the first straining, the fruit drains overnight to extract every last drop of juice. The second straining takes place the next day, after all the liquid has been extracted and the solids have been discarded. In the second straining, the liquid may be swirled or agitated to help the juice go through, but it should never be pressed through the sieve, as this will result in a cloudy mixture. Toward the end of each straining stage, the juice will start dripping much more slowly, and it is tempting at this point to continue with the recipe. However, these final drops of juice hold both the most pectin and the most flavor. Rushing this step can result in bland jelly that takes longer to set or jelly that may not set at all.

It is also important to remember that although you should usually add an ample amount of strained lemon juice to the mixture to tame the jelly’s sweetness, jelly cooks down significantly during the final cooking stage. If too much lemon juice has been added, the result will be unpleasantly acidic.

Last, be sure to cook jellies only until they are just done, as overcooked jelly is unpalatable. Start out by testing your jelly frequently, beginning when its bubbles become smaller and it starts to turn syrupy. Then, as you become better acquainted with the jelly-making process, you will be able to test fewer times and closer to the setting point.

MARMALADE MAKING

Citrus Marmalades: The Classic Techniques

Although marmalade-making techniques may be applied to numerous different fruits, what we think of as classic marmalade today is always made from citrus. There are two different traditional processes for citrus marmalade making.

The first takes place over the course of a single day. It involves simmering the whole fruit for several hours until soft, and then cutting it open, scooping out the flesh, slicing the rind, and combining the fruit with sugar. This technique tends to result in coarse, bitter marmalade of varying quality; because the process is compressed into a single day, the fruit’s flavor has little time to evenly distribute itself throughout the mixture. Also, because the fruit is sliced only after being cooked, it is often difficult to control the size and shape of the fruit slices.

The second, better, technique is traditionally a three-day process. This is because unlike jelly (for which the water becomes saturated with the fruit and the fruit loses all its character) or jam (for which little or no water is added and the only liquid comes from the fruit itself), marmalade contains a high proportion of both water and fruit solids. In order to make marmalade, three days are often needed for the flavor and pectin in these solids to leach enough into the water portion of the mixture for the marmalade to set and have a balanced flavor.

For the first day of this process, the fruit is sliced and soaked overnight with water at room temperature. On the second day, the mixture is cooked slowly until its volume has significantly reduced and the fruit is tender. On the third day, sugar and lemon juice are added and the mixture is cooked until done.

Marmalade Making Explored

Although classic English marmalade making typically involves this three-day process, numerous factors may affect which techniques are best applied for a specific marmalade. Marmalade making may involve a broad range of techniques. Factors affecting the citrus marmalade-making process may include:

Physical Characteristics of Peel: Different citrus fruits possess skins of different permeability, thickness, toughness, and stringiness. These characteristics help determine how many times the fruit should be cooked, how thickly it should be sliced, and whether to remove part of its pith. Depending upon which techniques are called for, the process may take either two or three days to complete.

Strength of Flavor of Peel: Overly astringent peel may require preliminary blanching and/or partial removal of the fruit’s pith; some old-fashioned recipes even call for removing the bitter membranes between the sections of fruit.

The Aesthetics of Marmalade

Marmalades are among the most satisfying and beautiful preserves to make. Their texture and appearance can vary widely. Although certain marmalades are less delicate than others, they all contain clearly defined pieces of fruit suspended in jelly.

There are many different approaches to marmalade in this book, each taken according to a particular vision of the perfect end result for that specific fruit or recipe. Below are descriptions of different types of marmalade and the processes used to make them. I have divided marmalades into the four broad categories listed below; many recipes fall somewhere in between.

Fine-Cut Marmalades: These are very delicately textured marmalades consisting of perfectly cooked jelly with a sprinkling of thin shreds of fruit throughout. Because the slices of fruit are so fine, and the jelly so soft and velvety, fine-cut marmalades may seem more like pure jellies at first glance. Slicing the fruit as thinly as possible gives the preserve a subtle elegance; although such slicing may result in marmalades having many shreds of fruit, their thinness prevents the marmalade from being overpowering. Marmalades in this category include Kumquat Marmalade (page 100), Citron Shred (page 305), Quince Marmalade (page 296), and Crabapple Marmalade (page 236).

Medium-Cut Marmalades: These marmalades are among the easiest to make. They consist of fruit (usually citrus) cut into medium-thick pieces, suspended in a jelly. The fruit is halved crosswise, quartered lengthwise, and then sliced crosswise, resulting in quarter-circle slices that may or may not remain completely intact during the cooking process. The flesh of the fruit is incorporated into the marmalade by virtue of being attached to the rind but requires no separate preparation. Depending on the fruit, medium-cut marmalades may take either two or three days to make. Examples include Meyer Lemon Marmalade with Mandarins & Lavender (page 104), Lemon Marmalade (page 54), Page Mandarin Marmalade (page 68), and Strawberry Blood Orange Marmalade with Rosemary (page 118).

Thick-Cut Marmalades: Thick-cut marmalades are most frequently found in Great Britain. They tend to be strong-flavored jellies, often incorporating fruit flesh, containing large chunks of bitter citrus rind. These marmalades are for true marmalade lovers, and they are best made using thick-skinned bitter fruits. They are usually made over three days in the traditional manner described at the start of this section; this approach maximizes flavor and pectin content. The proportion of jelly in such marmalades is extremely important because the chunks of fruit are so large; without ample jelly, the marmalade would be unspreadable. Thick-cut marmalades are extremely strong in flavor. Depending on the desired result and the fruit being used, the fruit may be blanched or not and may be sliced either before or after the initial cooking. Examples include Lemon & Pink Grapefruit Marmalade (page 61), English Marmalade (page 89), and English Three-Fruit Marmalade (page 92).

Marmalades Incorporating Fruit Flesh: These are marmalades that contain not only citrus rind or other clearly defined solids but also the soft flesh of fruit. This flesh is usually prepared (peeled, seeded, and/or chopped) separately from the rest of the solids and then recombined with them just prior to the final cooking. The fruit flesh tends to melt into the jelly portion of the marmalade, rendering it denser and more opaque than that of other marmalades. For this type of marmalade, it is important to carefully balance the different components, which may include freshly squeezed juice, cooked juice, sliced fruit, and/or multiple different fruits in addition to the soft fruit flesh. The citrus peel in such marmalades may be either thinly or coarsely cut, depending on the particular recipe. Examples include Early Girl Tomato Marmalade (page 276) and Yellow Grapefruit Marmalade (page 70).

Achieving a Perfect Texture in Marmalade

When making marmalade, you will need to decide not only how thick to slice or cut the fruit but also how to achieve the proper proportion of jelly to fruit pieces. For the proportion to be correct, it is almost always best to divide the raw fruit into two separate batches. One batch consists of the fruit slices to be included in the final marmalade. The other consists of larger pieces to be simmered for a long time with water and then discarded. The concentrated liquid resulting from this second batch is then added to the first batch, thinning it slightly to create a more balanced texture and intense flavor.

For marmalades consisting of more than one fruit, it is sometimes best to use only one of the fruits’ solids in the final mixture. When deciding which fruit’s solids to include in a particular marmalade, keep in mind that many fruits break down too much during cooking; only include fruits with firm structures. In any marmalade recipe, you may also tailor the texture to your liking by including more or fewer of the fruit solids, as long as the ratio of sugar to fruit remains unchanged.

Keep in Mind When Making Marmalade

Marmalade making shares many pitfalls with jelly making, but it also has some of its own. Perhaps the most important pitfall to avoid is adding too much water and overcooking the fruit solids. It is also important to plan well when making marmalade. For the marmalades in this book, adhering exactly to the time stated in each recipe is ideal. Although you may be able to take more time for certain marmalades, storing the mixture in the refrigerator between steps, this is often not a good idea because it can result in mushy solids that have steeped for too long in their liquid.

chapter 2

FRUIT: UNDERSTANDING THE ESSENTIAL INGREDIENT

WHERE AND HOW TO GET YOUR FRUIT

For both inspiration and quality, picking your own fruit or purchasing it at a farmers’ market is essential. What could be more beautiful than a luscious, perfectly ripe fruit straight off the tree, or more satisfying than to open your cupboard, retrieve a jar of jewel-like jam, and instantly be transported back to the moment when you first laid eyes on that fruit? We often forget that preserving began with our desire to enjoy fruit all year round and with the necessity of planning for seasons when it was scarce. Preserving is by nature a local, sustainable enterprise.

The experience of choosing and preparing fruit will connect you deeply to both your ingredients and the preserving process and the closer you are to the source of your fruit, the more satisfying this process will be. There is something utterly timeless about picking fruit; it is a vital reminder of our past and of the seasons. It takes a surprisingly short time to gather fruit, and the rewards are enormous. One thing that always amazes me is the huge quantity of fruit found on even a smallish tree or bush in the right season. Fruits I love to pick include wild blueberries, lemons, apricots, plums, blackberries, limes, quinces, and apples. My picking completed, I eagerly hurry off to my kitchen to make preserves. Once you have experienced this strong connection to fruit, it is hard to resist!

The pleasure and sense of ownership that come from picking your own fruit are unparalleled, but foraging at your local farmers’ market comes close. Local, small-scale farmers are not only the backbone of our ability to put quality food on the table but are also the guardians